Posts Tagged ‘people’

It was the year that Donald Trump dominated and demonized the media. That magazines built around news and analysis (New York, The New Yorker, Time) made the greatest impact, and produced the most eye-catching covers. That The People v. O.J. Simpson, Stranger Things and Samantha Bee ruled the tube—and that Megyn Kelly found herself on both sides of the news. This was also the year that digital platforms, players, obsessions and innovations—from Snapchat to Pokemon Go to Facebook Live, DJ Khaled to Chrissy Teigen—commanded our attention. Here, we present Adweek's annual Hot List, featuring our editors' picks for the year's top magazines, television and digital media, and the executives and content creators who dictate where the business is and where it's headed. Take Amazon's Jeff Bezos, our 2016 Media Visionary, who not only has changed the way we shop but, via his ownership of The Washington Post, is helping to save journalism in a perilous time of real-vs.-fake news. Here, we also present the winners of our annual Hot List Readers' Choice Poll, which this year generated more than 1.2 million votes at Adweek.com. As ever, all the terrific content being produced out there is made possible by the smartest, most creative leaders in the business—aside from Bezos, individuals like Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, FX's John Landgraf, and Hearst's David Carey and Michael Clinton. It is on them that we cast praise, and on them that a vibrant, forward-leaning media industry depends. Check out all this year's honorees: Hottest Magazines Media Visionary: Jeff Bezos Magazine Executive Team: Hearst's David Carey and Michael Clinton Magazine Editor: New York's Adam Moss Hottest TV Shows and Networks TV Executive: FX's John Landgraf TV Creator: Full Frontal's Samantha Bee TV News Anchor: Fox News' Megyn Kelly Hottest Digital Brands and Products Digital Executive: Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg Digital Creator: Casey Neistat This story first appeared in the November 28, 2016 issue of Adweek magazine. Click here to subscribe.

Social media directors for organizations and small-to-medium-sized businesses have evidently had a hard time simultaneously managing accounts for Facebook, Instagram and Facebook Messenger. So much so, in fact, that a number of them have evidently been juggling multiple iPhones to make it all work. To help with this, Facebook is unveiling a feature today called universal inbox to handle communications for all three channels via the Facebook Pages app . "Some people have been flipping through different apps to manage their various presences," remarked Benji Shomair, global head of pages at Facebook. "And other people would actually have multiple phones open." Universal inbox will let marketers more easily take note of comments, reviews and direct messages being authored by consumers on Facebook, Instagram and Facebook Messenger. In addition, page managers can use their cursor to tap a user's profile and see his or her publicly available information, potentially giving businesses more insights on how to interact with the potential customer

After years of treating "integration" as a dirty word, the people behind many of TV's biggest shows have changed their tune and are embracing them as something beneficial to their shows, rather than a punishment that must be endured. "We like having that extra money that allows us to do some scenes, or buy music, we otherwise wouldn't be able to," said Modern Family co-creator Steve Levitan. "In some cases, it actually helps the scene. It sounds more natural to say, 'Who wants to go to Target with me?' than, 'Who wants to go to the department store with me?'" Yet in a surprising role reversal, as TV's showrunners (including a dozen that spoke with Adweek) are more receptive than ever to integrations, buyers and brands no longer have the same enthusiasm for them. "It used to be the showcase in a buy, to say we brought in integration," said Neil Vendetti, president of investment at Zenith. "Now we're talking about integrations with clients a bit less." That sentiment is reflected in new data from Nielsen TV Brand Effect, which indicates that the number of integrations in original, nonsports prime-time programming on the five broadcast networks has fallen each year, from 4,701 in the 2013-14 season to 4,538 in the 2015-16 season. That's not to say that TV integrations aren't still plentiful, or high profile. In last season's most successful partnership, Empire featured a multi-episode arc in which rising star Jamal Lyon (Jussie Smollett) was wooed by Pepsi to endorse the soda. As the cast sat down to watch the ad, Empire cut to commercial where the actual spot played. "That was pure kismet because we broke a story in the [writers] room where we said, Jamal is going to get a major endorsement, and it's going to be a threat to [his father] Lucious because it means he's going to be a bigger star," said Empire showrunner Ilene Chaiken.

Political ad spending is like a river, but many campaigns continue to falter by swimming against the current. This year's election cycle may prove to be the final time political campaigns are run like it's still the early 2000s. Sean Duggan The shifting dynamics of ad spending in American politics is yet another bizarre component of this memorably quixotic election year. This reality is fueled, at least in part, by the strikingly modest spending on the part of Donald Trump's campaign, particularly during the GOP primary. Trump's commanding early primary victories left a vast field of consultants and campaigns questioning the effectiveness of paid advertising. As we speed toward Nov. 8, some answers are finally imminent. And they could ultimately be nothing short of game changing for politics as usual in advertising. Despite the home-stretch acceleration of ad spending on the part of Trump, Hillary Clinton has still outspent her opponent by a lopsided 7-to-1 ratio during the past three months, according to AP estimates. If Trump manages to win—or even make it respectably close—the reverberations throughout the political advertising world will be nuclear in the force of their impact. In recent years, media planning and campaign tactics have ignored—to their ultimate detriment—major media consumption and communication shifts. As a result, consumer marketers are now doing a better job commandeering the modern media landscape than the majority of political campaign consultants. Consider the decisions of media consultants in charge of spending $100 million for Jeb Bush's super PAC. "The super PAC consistently bought broadcast television advertising in the biggest, most expensive markets at the highest possible rates," said Molly Ball in the October 2016 issue of The Atlantic. "It Fed-Exed tablet-like mailers to New Hampshire voters that played a documentary about Bush's life, and put just 1.4 percent of its budget toward digital ads, an abnormally tiny amount for a top super PAC." A mere 1.4 percent for digital? Just let that sink in for a minute. Political spending on digital media was expected to break the $1 billion mark for the first time in 2016, according to Borrell Associates, but at a paltry 9.5 percent of total spending, it would seriously lag behind most consumer marketing categories now earmarking 30 to 50 percent for digital. Notwithstanding the ballot burnout most Americans are already experiencing this election season, the 2020 presidential campaign will unofficially commence before the confetti stops falling for the next president-elect.

While broadcast viewers are thought to represent a more traditional TV audience than those watching cable, a new report says they are actually less likely to watch programming live than their cable counterparts, especially if the network in question is The CW. That information comes from TiVo Research's Q2 State of TV report, which was released today. The quarterly report tracks time-shifting using TiVo's Media TRAnalytics data set, which anonymously aggregates set-top box data from more than 2.3 million households including TiVo owners and other cable providers. According to the study, while the vast majority of TV viewing continues to be live, broadcast network prime-time viewing is more likely to be time-shifted than cable programming. Twenty-six percent of broadcast prime-time programming was time-shifted during the second quarter (23 percent overall was watched in the C3 window, from the same day to three days later; the other 3 percent was time-shifted four to seven days). In total day viewing, 20 percent of broadcast programing was time-shifted. For cable prime-time viewing during the quarter, 88 percent was viewed live, with total day viewing even higher at 91 percent. The CW is the most time-shifted of the broadcast networks. Only 56 percent of its viewers watch live in prime time.

Who wants a song and dance from their airline? We'll soon find out, thanks to Southwest's glitzy musical ads from GSD&M, part of the carrier's overarching "Transfarency" campaign. Actual airline employees appear in the relentlessly upbeat commercials, lip-syncing and strutting their way through a series of loud, dramatically staged production numbers. In the anthem spot below, set to Willy Moon's "Yeah Yeah," a terminal morphs into a slammin' club, and Southwest flight attendants Alphonso Thomas and Melissa Salaman, along with other airline employees and lots of dancers, bust moves to the booming beat: Of course, real airports usually specialize in line dances—long and slow-moving ones—that make folks wanna get away, and stay away. But Southwest works hard to portray its travel experience as irrepressibly positive. "Last year, we captured Southwest's 'low fares with nothing to hide' philosophy," says GSD&M creative chief Jay Russell. "This year was about making people feel it. And what does it feel like? Simple: It feels like 'Yes.' Yes, you can travel. Yes, you can use your rewards. Yes, Southwest loves flying you." Next, customer service reps Tammy Davis and Guillermo Rosales join ramp agent Roy Nabors for a karaoke take on Journey's "Any Way You Want It": Yeah, the '80s never died.

The media world was out in full force, enjoying the last days of summer on both coasts. In Los Angeles, the Emmy Awards took everyone's attention, while in New York magazines were in high gear. More below

The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story has been more successful than even FX could have imagined. The miniseries won nine Emmys in all Sunday night, including outstanding limited series, and was watched by an average of 12.6 million people across all platforms. Now FX is shifting its focus to the second season of American Crime Story, which will focus on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. The decision raised eyebrows when it was first revealed in January, given that the topic would seem to be less palatable to audiences than People v. O.J. was. Yet the network has never wavered in its Katrina plans, says FX Networks CEO John Landgraf, who noted that a 10-episode miniseries focusing on the Simpson trial was met with just as much initial skepticism as Katrina was. Katrina "was our only choice from the very beginning," said Landgraf. "If we're all honest—and I'll be honest on my behalf—when we heard they're going to make something based on The People v. O.J. Simpson, it was like, 'Really? Do we really need that?' Because essentially on its face, what we had is cheesy, self-serving, profit-seeking, poor narrative built around that story. The reason we wanted to do it was that we could see from Jeff Toobin's book and from [Scott] Alexander and [Larry] Karaszewski's scripts and through our producers, that actually it was something much richer and more humane and deeper." Then, after People v.

Today Deutsch announced a major leadership change as chairman and longtime executive Linda Sawyer plans to leave the agency at the end of the calendar year. She plans to launch an unnamed ecommerce project in early 2017. Sawyer, who has been with the IPG network for more than 27 years, replaced former chairman and TV personality Donny Deutsch as its top executive last year while Mike Sheldon was simultaneously promoted to the chief executive role. Following her departure, Sheldon will hold the title of chairman and CEO, North America. "Anyone who knows Linda is aware that she combines a great understanding of our industry with a dynamic management style," said Interpublic chairman and CEO Michael Roth in a statement, adding, "That's why she's been able to build a fantastic team at Deutsch during her long tenure at the agency. She's a fierce protector of her people and her agency, as well as a partner who clients know will always make their success her top priority. Along with everyone at Deutsch, I thank Linda for her dedication and commitment." The departing chairman joined the Deutsch organization in 1989 and ascended to the CEO role 16 years later as Donny Deutsch became chairman during a transitional period for the agency

The longest-running show on American television is having a moment, once again. NBC's Meet the Press is beginning its new season with a formula that hasn't changed much since it debuted on Nov. 6, 1947: A moderator interviews a newsmaker, usually a politician or candidate, followed by a discussion of the top political and policy issues of the day. These days the moderator is Chuck Todd, a political wonk who got his start in politics briefly working for the 1992 presidential campaign of Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). "Basically, I was the runner to go to the bank to deposit checks," he explained. After 15 years at National Journal's The Hotline, including six as editor in chief, the late Tim Russert recruited Todd to NBC as political director.

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Talk NYC/WW is your daily download of the tech, marketing and advertising news you need to know. It’s smartly curated to keep you up to speed on the innovators and innovations that are shaking up the digital world today.